Technical Field of the Invention
The relevant technological field is media content scheduling and delivery.
Description of Related Art
Radio station systems for delivering advertising and other media content inventory are primarily disconnected and locally operated. Network originated programming and commercial advertising content is usually distributed manually and inefficiently to local media outlets. For example, local media outlets typically either receive a fax, e-mail, or manually visit a website to acquire instructions and content from a network or other media content provider. The visits are typically repeated in a manually-intensive manner often on a daily basis. These repetitive manual processes are inefficient, require a trained staff and are error prone.
Arrangements that provide solutions to the described problems are less than perfect. The few systems that are integrated are connected only locally or in some cases regionally. None of these systems provide an enterprise-wide or nation-wide connection of distributed media outlets. Further, traditional systems offer little in the way of automation, extensibility and near time placement of advertising or other media content across multiple regions. Traditional systems do not enable media content providers to select available spots from nationally distributed media outlets, automatically upload and transmit content to distributed media outlets and receive an automated verification of the broadcast of the media content.
In some embodiments a method is disclosed. The method can include sending a request to a media content provider requesting media content, and receiving the media content and instructions from the media provider. The instructions can be utilized by the media provider to broadcast the media content. The media provider can store the received media content in a database process the instructions then distribute the media content and the instructions to distributed media outlets. The media content provider can receive information indicating that the media content was broadcast by the distributed media outlets according to the instructions.
In some embodiments a system is disclosed. The system can include an enterprise hub, which is operatively coupled to a network and the database. The hub can send the media content request via the network and automatically distribute the media content and the instructions responsive to the processing of the broadcast instructions.
System embodiments can also include a network, a processor operatively coupled to the network, and a database operatively coupled to the processor. The processor can request media content from a media provider via the network, receive the media content and broadcast instructions from the media content provider. The processor can store the received media content in the database. The processor can process the instructions and distribute the media content and the instructions to distributed media outlets. The processor can also receive information indicating if the media content was broadcast by the distributed media outlets according to the instructions. In some embodiments, the processor can automatically distribute the media content based on the processing of the instructions and can instruct the distributed media outlets on parameters for broadcasting the media content.
In yet another embodiment a computer readable medium is disclosed. The medium can be a computer program product embodied as computer usable program code. The computer usable program code can be configured to request media content from a media provider via the network. The code when executed can cause the computer to receive the media content and instruction that facilitate to the broadcasting of the media content from the media content provider. The instructions when executed can facilitate storing of the received media content in a database, processing the instructions, and distributing the media content and the instructions to distributed media outlets in response to the processing of the instructions. The code when executed can instruct the distributed media outlets with respect to airing the media content, and receive information indicating if the media content was broadcast by the distributed media outlets according to the instructions. Other embodiments are also disclosed.